All's Fair -- Part Ve
Upon hearing the new motto, you nod appreciatively, and the whispers gain strength. Finally, Hammy jumps up and belts out the motto with deep conviction, followed by Tom Bastard, then by Rick Scullion. Soon all the boys are chanting it together, their expressions animated by the flickering light of the campfire and by a new sense of unity, their fists marking out the beat as one. Except Cadmon, who sulks sullenly at the scene.
Early the next morning, your band of brothers marches solemnly down the hill to stand witness at the initiation ceremony of one Gervaise Lescrivain into the Fraternal Order of the Knights of the Keep near the bear-baiter's wagon. Wooden cages rattle with pent-up fury as your approach is scented by the starving beasts within them. One large cage, however, is wrought of thick iron--and yet a huge black furry mound slumbers quite peacefully inside. You dimly recall your father telling you a story about a fearsome bear once, and the lasting impression of horror that he imparted to you returns perfectly clear, if not the actual words. Should that particular cage have been rattling, perhaps even your impeccable courage might sorely be tested.
Hammy and Gervaise join the assembly, lugging behind them a sack of entrails from the cook's midden heap. There is a brief controversy in the group over who should be responsible for opening up a cage that is being battered and rocked by its contents of enraged hungry dog, but eventually everyone agrees with Armaut, when he opines that there's a deep poetic balance in Gervaise both freeing and capturing the snarling and snapping animal all by himself, symbolising the inner struggle of a knight to set loose and to restrain his warrior spirit as society deems necessary. With heartfelt nods, the other boys jump up on nearby wagons to watch the trembling scribe commune with his warrior spirit.
Gervaise quits dragging the sack of guts, and hesitantly makes his knock-kneed advance upon the cage's position, with anxious glances thrown frequently to the boys planted on wagons to his left and right, and sometimes back at you. When he draws near, the cage leaps with the hurled weight of the hound's body, and he nearly faints. Mastering his fear, he sets himself to run away as he tremulously reaches out and slides the locking pin from the cage door. The cage door explodes open.
"Augh. Augh. Augh! Auugghh!" Gervaise barely avoids being savaged right at the very threshold of the cage, the dog's jaws noisily clomping at the emptiness that his arse had just vacated a split second earlier. The gangly scribe then begins racing about the field full of rocking cages in closely-pursued figures of eight, with no discernible objective beyond staying in one piece for a split second longer. At first, his strategy is aided by a meagre physique propelled forward on long limbs, which allow him to open up a secure lead, but now is hindered by the state of his robes, whose lower half is increasingly sodden by a spreading wetness that clings the fabric to his legs most cumbersomely. Viewed together with his awkward gait--which you could hardly call effeminate after having seen many girls run with greater dignity--the spectacle evokes a morbid comedy that washes over the boys safely on the wagons. You damn them for laughing at the poor boy from their safety; then with a jolt of realisation, you damn yourself for not being among them.
"Augh! Auugghh! AAUUGGHH!" Gervaise's screams grow louder as he turns and makes a dash toward you. His flailing set of stilt-like legs fail him in the dewy morning grass, and he flops face down in front of you. You barely notice. Your world narrows down to a single set of bared yellow fangs rapidly closing the distance.
Gervaise is about four seconds away from you, the dog twice that. The wagons are probably twenty seconds of running behind the dog, but slightly to either side. You could probably run sidelong past the dog, and for that matter, you don't even know that the dog will chase you. You have your everpresent wooden sword, of course.
Author
Topic: Heirship: A Suggestion Game (Read 29388 times)